If you are looking to launch your career in the field of Digital Marketing, now's the right time. According to official sources, the digital economy is growing as much as 10 times faster than other sectors of the economy, which will soon result in the lack of thousands of Digital Marketing professionals. In this post, we've listed 7 tips for those who are planning to dive in head first in the fascinating, yet ultra-competitve world of Digital Marketing.

1. Find your happy

Digital Marketing encompasses a wide range of disciplines, hence the need to spot the areas of the Digital world that attract you the most. Fancy technology and data analysis? This means you might either become an SEM/SEO manager, or a Digital Analyst. You're more the sociology and journalism type of profile? No worries, Community Management is an increasingly well-regarded area of Digital Marketing that would allow you to put your writing and social skills to good use.

2. Keep yourself up to date

Due to its ever-changing nature, Digital Marketing requires people to keep themsleves up to date about each and every new trend that shows up on the market. In order to achieve that, a good way to keep constantly informed of what's going on out there is to follow the industry's biggest references through newsletters and social network feeds.

Here are a few blogs that we would advise anybody who is serious about becoming a Digital Marketing expert to follow:

A good digital marketing professional needs to be accustomed to the industry's most widely spread acronyms such as PPC, SEM, SEO, CRM, RTB only to name a few. The mere fact of not knowing the meaning of any of those terms could clearly put you at a disadvantagein a job interview, as it's a very simple way to distinguish well-versed candidates from newbies. While it's unlikely an interviewer would directly ask you the meaning of these terms, it's quite common to hear questions such as: "How would you say SEM can have an influence on SEO in a company's global digital strategy?". That's when you don't want to start looking at the floor, to only come up with a vague answer that lets the interviewer know you don't really understand the difference between these two concepts.

4. Become a bit of a geek

While traditional marketing is known for involving a fair share of glamorous tasks such as organizing events and keynotes, Digital Marketing on the other hand is a lot more focused on "geeky" tasks such as dealing with all kinds of technologies and statistical data. You probably won't need to become a programming ninja, since most digital marketers rely on developers to create web pages for their campaigns. However, a basic understanding of HTML will definitely help you communicate with your web design team, and will make you more sensitive to the possible difficulties your team may encounter along the way while trying to make your website work on all kinds of devices and browsers.

5. Master your metrics

Do you know the difference between a campaign's CPL and CPA? In an interview for a SEM Manager position, the interviewer will probably ask you how many leads you generated, at what cost and with what ROI in your last job. Also, you will need to demonstrate your ability to turn these metrics into insights by converting Google Analytics data into Excel reports. A hiring manager might want to ask you which KPI's you would use if you were to analyze his company's marketing campaigns, as a good way to figure out your understanding of Digital Analytics.

6. Certifications

Apart from the solid academic background that you're clearly supposed to have in order for your CV to stand out from the crowd, it's highly recommended to have the most well-regarded certifications in the industry such as the Google Adwords and Google Analytics certificate, as well as any other type of qualification that would be relevant in your area of interest.

7. Networking and blogging

Surround yourself with people that are more qualified than yourself, so that you may acquire top knowledge and always keep ahead of new trends. Don't forget the late Steve Job's quote: "We don't hire people to teach them how to do the job, we hire people so they can teach us how to do the job". Don't expect companies to hire you, train you from A to Z and also pay you handsomely. Hiring managers will be more generous if they feel you may bring fresh know-how and ideas right from the start than if they feel you're going to have to go through a steep learning curve before you can start being profitable to the company. Start a blog to show off your expertise in your area of interest if need be, there's nothing better than reading someone's writings to get a grasp of their potential.